“Learning is a social process that occurs through interpersonal interaction within a cooperative context. Individuals, working together, construct shared understandings and knowledge“.

Housing Advocacy

The lack of affordable housing in Sonoma County has resulted in growing numbers of homeless day laborers. Many of these men live in overcrowded apartments or trailers (sometimes eight to ten men per one bedroom apartment). Others have resorted to living in a creek side encampment near Graton. Concerns about the environmental impact of the day laborers’ encampment brought local environmentalists to the community consensus process. The owner of the encampment site land has been extremely generous and open to working collaboratively with CLG. Thanks to his support and the input of many concerned community members, significant improvements have been made at the encampment.

These include:

Portable toilets, trash and recycling collection, clean water supplies, and camping platforms with tarp covers;
Identification and restricted use of environmentally sensitive areas along the creek bed;
Installation of new BBQ units and picnic tables at the site to minimize fire risk;
Twice-yearly community supported encampment / creek cleanup days.

Centro Laboral de Graton has committed its recently hired staff organizer to spend eight to ten hours per week at the encampment site, focusing on improving communication, accountability and community health. Our goal is to encourage major improvements in the hygiene, health and social life of the laborers who camp there.

Recent encampment achievements include:

Implementation of new camp agreement developed by day labor leaders;
Environmental education for encampment residents;
Weekly assemblies centering on rights and responsibilities.

Update for 2008: Due to our desire to encourage safe, decent, environmentally sound housing options, we no longer support the existence of organized homeless camps near Graton. We are working hard to discourage such living arrangements and have devoted staff time to creating a network of housing advocacy and referral within our project. We will be measuring the impact that this intervention has on the existence of homelessness in Graton.

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